Vilnius Plans Retrospective for French Director Leos Carax

Full program of art house director's works to run during Lithuania's top festival, Kino Pavasaris next year

French art-house director Leos Carax is to be honored with a full retrospective of his work at Lithuania's top film festival, the Vilnius International Film Festival Kino Pavasaris, next March.

The festival, which means 'film spring' in Lithuanian, will screen all his films from the Alex trilogy — Boy Meets Girl (1984), The Night is Young (1986), The Lovers on the Bridge (1991) — to his later films Pola X (1999) and Holy Motors (2012).

Carax, who first visited the festival in 1996, was back in Vilnius this weekend for a special taster showing of Holy Motors at the festival's main venue Forum Cinema Vingis, followed by a Q&A with the audience, hosted by local screenwriter and philosopher Kristupas Sabolius.

The festival, the largest in Lithuania — which clocked up nearly 100,000 visitors for a program of over 200 films at its 19th edition earlier this year, a significant figure for a country of fewer than three million people — marks its 20th anniversary from March 19-April 2, 2015.

In a statement the festival said: "The audience will have a great opportunity to experience the unique worlds and a particular style of filmmaking that Leos Carax has created during his 20-year career."

Carax is a regular name at the Cannes film festival, where he has twice won the youth award for Boy Meets Girl in 1984 and Holy Motors in 2012.